UW-Stevens Point rolls out transformation that would cut 6 liberal arts degrees, focus on careers

University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Chancellor Bernie Patterson proposed eliminating six humanities majors at the school.
University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point

Protesters enter Old Main, the university's administration building, for a sit-in to protest a proposal to cut 13 liberal arts majors at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point in Stevens Point, Wis., Wednesday, March 21, 2018.(Photo: Alexandra Wimley/USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin)

Proclaiming the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point no longer can be all things to all people, Chancellor Bernie Patterson on Monday proposed eliminating a handful of humanities majors and transforming the school into “a new kind of regional university” that infuses the liberal arts into "career-minded" majors.

It’s not known whether the proposed “restructuring around our strengths” model could be a blueprint for retrenching other regional UWs as all campuses face tight budgets, and enrollments generally are stagnant or declining.

Last spring, it appeared the central Wisconsin campus with 7,725 students was headed toward phasing out 13 low-demand humanities majors to reduce its nearly $8 million structural deficit. Students protested, faculty were outraged, and national media headlines suggested Wisconsin was killing the humanities.

The chancellor’s proposal released to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel before a campuswide meeting Monday whittles down the cut to six low-demand science and humanities majors: French, German, history, geology, geography and two degree programs within art (two-dimensional and three-dimensional art).

The history degree is in jeopardy because of a 48 percent drop in the number of students choosing it as a major over the past five years, from 146 students in 2013 to 76 last year. The number of students majoring in history is dropping around the country, in part because of parent and student concerns about finding jobs.

History isn't the only major suffering from low enrollment. During the same period, the overall number of declared majors on campus decreased by 24 percent, mainly due to enrollment losses at the university.

Phasing out the six majors would eliminate roughly six to 10 faculty positions — a 2 to 3 percent cut— including at least three tenured faculty, Patterson told the Journal Sentinel.

Bernie Patterson, chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.(Photo: Courtesy of UW-Stevens Point)

The biggest cut would be in the history department, which would shrink upper-level courses and lose four faculty members.

The university would ensure currently enrolled students could finish their degrees, and admission to the majors would remain open until a UW Board of Regents vote in the spring on the chancellor’s proposal, which could still change through a 90-day campus committee review, Patterson said.

Patterson at the same time is calling for new majors in areas of “high regional employer demand,” a push for online courses to serve degree-seeking adults and working professionals, and stronger partnerships with local high schools and technical schools.

The chancellor said he wants to use all 12 months of the calendar year to reduce the time needed to earn a degree and create “stackable credentials” that working professionals could combine flexibly into degrees.

Stackable credentials for nontraditional students seeking to advance in their careers or reinvent themselves professionally are a hot trend in higher education.

Layoffs rare in academia

While layoffs are not at all uncommon in the private business sector, a layoff of tenured faculty would be rare in academia.

Controversial changes made to state law through the last biennial budget, which captured national attention, paved the way for such layoffs while purportedly enshrining academic freedom protections.

UW System President Ray Cross declined to address possible implications for other campuses, instead focusing on thanking those involved in hundreds of conversations on the Stevens Point campus over the past several months, including faculty, staff, students and the architect of much of the proposal, Provost Greg Summers.

Summers, incidentally, majored in history in college and was a history professor at UW-Stevens Point before becoming provost.

Greg Summers, UW-Stevens Point provost(Photo: UW-Stevens Point)

Other UW campuses have made major cuts to staffing, though no tenured faculty layoffs, which must be done under the new Board of Regents policy that lays out a multi-step process.

UW-Superior hasn't done tenured faculty layoffs, but last fall suspended 25 academic programs, including nine majors,15 minors and one graduate program. That brought to 40 the number of programs it has suspended since 2014.

Restructuring is common in private sector

To many in the private sector, restructuring is a no-brainer, given their own workforce cutbacks and restructurings in response to a fast-changing, high-tech world.

Patterson told the Journal Sentinel he frequently hears from business leaders that expanding and contracting is commonplace for them.

“They usually express, ‘I’m surprised it took higher ed so long,” he said.

In academia — especially large, public university systems — change happens slowly and something on the scale of what UW-Stevens Point is proposing is highly unusual. History as a college major dates to the 1950s at the campus. The discipline itself goes back to the 1890s.

Interdisciplinary majors that combine multiple fields to broaden possible career paths is the trend.

Critics likely will see the shift to so-called "career-minded" or "career-focused" majors as a move toward vocational education and weakening the humanities.

Still fresh is a controversial, quietly attempted and quickly abandoned political maneuver to edit the UW System’s guiding mission by removing “search for truth” and replacing it with “meet the state’s workforce needs.”

But supporters will argue changing workforce needs, demographic shifts, growing reluctance to take on student loan debt, technology, and chronic cuts to state funding make restructuring necessary.

The proposal emphasizes that the university and its programs must be “deeply engaged” in local communities and that students should “learn by doing” as they work to understand, analyze, and solve real-world problems “throughout our region.”

While the university has always played a major role in central and northern Wisconsin’s economy, Patterson said, that role must go deeper and address challenges that jeopardize the region’s future, including aging populations, reduced access to health care, fragile local economies and struggling cultural institutions.

“UW-Stevens Point must adapt to the changing needs of central and northern Wisconsin in the best tradition of the regional university, proactively charting our course in ways that capitalize on our longstanding strengths and improve our ability to serve as a community partner,” Patterson’s 17-page proposal says.

Summers and Patterson were adamant during an interview with the Journal Sentinel that there’s a clear distinction between what the proposed shift is — and isn’t.

“Technical colleges train students for a particular job. We train them for a career and for life,” Patterson said. “Technical colleges have a distinct mission, and so do we.”

Universities under scrutiny

Universities are increasingly being asked to prove their value, as conservatives accuse them of being elite bastions of liberalism.

While most Republican college graduates in a Pew Research survey last year said their own college experience was valuable for developing workplace skills, only 36% said colleges and universities have a positive effect on the way things are going in the country.

Among the preserved humanities majors that were on the table for elimination last spring: English and art. They were saved by resignations and retirements, and significant revisions to those majors, including cutting the two degree tracks within art.

The nuts and bolts

Under the proposal, traditional academic departments would be replaced by interdisciplinary, professional schools, and degree programs would be grouped to align with “career-focused goals of students and talent needs of the region’s communities and business.”

The proposal calls for building on the university's strengths, including its longstanding focus on natural resources and expertise in environmental issues. Faculty from disciplines such as English, history, philosophy, political science and geography would join the existing natural resources faculty to create a new School of Natural Resources.

That would pave the way for new offerings in sustainability studies that allow students to pursue careers related to the social, political and cultural aspects of environmental issues in areas such as public policy, nonprofit leadership, and urban and regional planning.

UW-Stevens Point also plans new programs in Geographic Information Science at both the bachelor’s and master’s levels.

Where full majors are being eliminated, coursework would continue to be offered through the general education curriculum, as required courses in other majors, or as part of new interdisciplinary programs. Minors would be preserved.

Three new colleges would be formed: The College of Natural Resources and Sciences, the College of Professional Studies, and the College of Fine Arts and Humanities.

The existing University College — which houses library, academic student support, and faculty and staff development — would continue with those functions, but also oversee the university’s new two-year branch campuses in Wausau and Marshfield, the two-year associate degree program, and the General Education Program.

The campus plans to seek funding from the UW System to hire a private consultant team that would determine whether additional savings could be found by outsourcing services including dining and food, and student health.

Not abandoning liberal arts, chancellor says

“Central and northern Wisconsin need more people with a stronger foundation in the liberal arts than ever before — for a thriving economy, an educated citizenry, and the well-being of our society.” Patterson’s proposal says.

“In a world now awash in information, people must be equipped to learn and continue learning over a lifetime, to think critically and analyze arguments, and to creatively solve problems.”

That’s why the liberal arts will not be “an afterthought” at UW-Stevens Point that students only encounter through randomly selected general education courses with little connection to one another and tenuous relevance to their future careers, Patterson said.

Patterson proposed creating an “Institute for the Wisconsin Idea” for liberal arts-related education and outreach efforts in central and northern Wisconsin. It would be staffed by faculty from liberal arts disciplines across the university, with a task of creating a liberal arts core curriculum to complement so-called "career-focused" majors.

“We will place special focus on critical thinking, a core analytical skill we will teach initially in foundation courses and then reinforce repeatedly across the curriculum to ensure that our graduates are among the best prepared in the state,” Patterson’s proposal says.

As part of that effort, he also wants to create a “Center for Critical Thinking” to provide the same training and outreach through local high schools, employers, nonprofits, and other community partners.

Humanities degrees still pay off

A professor of economics at the University of Georgia a few years ago calculated the predicted value of college degrees in a wide variety of fields, and found humanities degrees paid more than many may expect.

Projected mid-career salary for a history major, based on 2014 numbers, was $71,000, with an early career salary of $39,700, according to the professor, Jeffrey Dorfman.

“The humanities help us be human, to understand the world,” said Martha Potvin, president of the national Association of Chief Academic Officers and provost and vice president for academic affairs at Springfield College in New England.

“They help us tell fact from fiction, develop thinking skills so we can solve problems we don’t even know exist yet and learn from those who went before us. They help students challenge their own beliefs and values so they can be open to other ways of thinking.”

Students with degrees in the humanities have a stronger ability to think broadly because they haven’t been trained narrowly within a professional degree, Potvin said. “They need to be able to pivot as the world changes.”

Some universities are trying to match so-called STEM disciplines with the humanities, she said.

“There are ways to create novel degree programs that add value and have humanities perspective to look to the past to know what we can do in the future, and to add the human element,” Potvin said.

That’s what Patterson and Summers say they are doing.

Millennials seem to be more job-focused, Potvin said. But students entering college now “want to make a difference in the world,” she said, suggesting humanities may still see a renaissance.

Ultimately, a major is less important than skills provided by a college education, said Lynn Pasquerella, president of the national Association of American Colleges and Universities.

“There are ways to deliver the content and demonstrate value within a discipline without having a major,” she said.

It’s a challenging time for higher education, Pasquerella said, because some states are taking the position that liberal arts and sciences are a luxury, and those who want to pursue a major such as women and gender studies should just go to a private school.

There is a concern, she said, that access to a liberal arts education will become only for the richest, while low-income students will be limited to vocational training.

What’s next

How faculty positions would be eliminated — whether through layoffs, buyouts or shifting teaching duties elsewhere — would need to be worked out in the spring, Patterson told the Journal Sentinel.

A university shared governance committee will have 90 days to review Patterson’s proposal and suggest changes before the UW Board of Regents votes on it early next year, prior to the campus developing its budget for the next fiscal year that begins July 1.

The first stages of the restructuring must be in place no later than July 2020, according to Patterson.